bad crown miters

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I run a small custom shop that specializes in residential cabinetry. We do on occasion install moulding as a side job when we need the work but trim work is not one of our normal specialties. However, I have a lady who has been an excellent repeat customer over the years and she has asked us to come and look at the crown (5-5 1/2?) she had installed by a local "carpenter". It is wide painted crown and suffice it to say the quality of the installation leaves a lot to be desired. The corners are coming apart and of course are not 45 miters that fit but were just close and filled with caulk. I would like to help her out if at all possible but don't want to get involved with removing all the crown in the whole house and re-installing; neither she nor I can afford to do this. All that said-can anyone offer suggestions? I originally thought about stop/transition blocks I have seen but this won't work where the crown now wraps around wall returns, etc. Could one possibly try gluing in slivers of matching crown that would fill the gaps at the miters and then filling/painting? Just looking at options that will make it look presentable on 10' ceilings without having to remove, finish new, and re-install properly.

If you could make a jig to cut a consistent 1/4" (maybe less) out of the corners, and glue in the filler pieces, then it could work. Sounds like a job for an oscillating saw. Sand it fair. Fiddly work: time and materials.

As a painted crown the only limitation to making it work is time, ability and money. You could use nails, staples, glue and/or bondo to "fix" the appearance of the joint and re-paint. if it were a natural wood finish it would be a lot harder to fix without seeing the patch. Be easier and cost less if the original installer had done it right but...

Bruce-yeah it would have been nice but it was a little beyond the skill level of their "carpenter". That said-I like the bondo idea. I have used bondo as a filler in certain applications but didn't think of it here. I had decided the route to go was to fill and mold the bad miters into nice, crisp corners then sand and paint. I just couldn't think what to use.

On my outside miter I use wood glue and spring miter clamps.
I leave them until the glue dries then I like to use Timbermate
It's a water based putty that dries hard does not crack/shrink.It cleans up with water.
You can sand it or smooth it with a wet rag.Then just paint.
They offer different wood color that takes stain very well
Use of sand paper/file will make those corners look good

For the outside miters that are open. Clean out the caulk. Strip/sand the paint off. Use West system Six10 epoxy to fill in the gaps. Over fill it a bit. After a day or two sand the shape back into the epoxy to match the crown.

The epoxy is thick and will not run. It is great at filling gaps.

The epoxy is structural and if you get good adhesion in the joint it will never let go.

Joiner-If you read the posts again, you will see that I didn't do the crown to begin with and am trying to fix a mess that someone else made. Yes, proper installation WOULD have been nice! I KNOW that tight outside miters and coped inside corners are the way to do it!!

The fact that you're asking how to fix some other dudes screw-up tells me that this lady might be throwing good money after bad. Why don't you stick to your quality cabinet work and let the painter/finisher daub on whatever he does.

If you really want to play with Playdough then I recommend good 'ol Bondo at a fraction of the cost of any West Systems shinola.

Tony, I feel your pain man; I'm on another type of "please save this" job myself right now.
Any filler- from carpenters filler to Bondo- will crack out after a while. Even epoxy (or the wood itself) will crack on at least one side of a joint as it won't expand /contract with the seasonal movements.
I've been asked to clean up work like this in the past and I've approached it with cutting back and splicing in new pieces when the joinery was so buggered I couldn't do anything with it; using a couple applications of one of the "superstretch" caulks and using the aforementioned West System (or other) epoxies with a sandable filler added.
It's making a cookie out of a cat turd, but it's worth it to keep a good customer happy. Good luck.

Mark-thanks for the response. Just as a matter of professional pride-everyone please keep in mind that I WAS NOT the one who originally did this installation and am just trying to help out an elderly former customer who kinda got the shaft. Merry Christmas!

1/4 gaps are hard to fill and profile after the fact. Each corner done correctly would take about 20 to 30 minutes and in a square room it takes about an hour to install crown. If you charged by to hour the cost would be about the same. My thought would be take down the long walls and reuse them on shorter walls. Pull the nails though the back side so you don't damage the front or hit a nail on the saw. This also depends how many nails the installer used, if they hit the studs and ceiling joists, is the crown made of mdf or poplar.

Then only buy and finish a few pieces for the high visibility areas. Make the best of a bad situation.

I have been in this situation before. I had to fix some, erm, craftsmen's work that the customer didn't want to completely replace. The other posters are right about bondo and epoxy cracking. One thing that I found helped a lot was to clean any caulk or glue from the joint, and shoot plenty of 23 gauge pins through both sides of the outside miter, at a variety of distances from the tip of the miter inwards. Push the epoxy or bondo you apply into the pins. They support the filler like rebar in concrete and greatly reduce later cracking.

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